Tego Science reportedly plans to release its cell therapy Rosmir to treat under-the-eye wrinkles in the first half of the year. And industry watchers are paying attention to whether the new drug will be a game changer in the Botox market.
The company received approval for the anti-wrinkle cell therapy on Dec. 28, the first of its kind in the world.
Compared to U.S. firm Fibrocell’s LaViv, a fibroblast treatment with indications for improvement of facial wrinkles, Rosmir requires a shorter production period of three to six weeks while LaViv needs three to six months. Rosmir also has the advantage that it is a single intradermal administration, compared with LaViv’s three-time intradermal administrations over three to six weeks of intervals.
As Rosmir offers a single administration, the patient can visit the hospital just two times for a procedure, one for collecting a cell and the other for the administration of the cell therapy.
As the new treatment is a self-derived cell therapy using the patient’s cells, it will have fewer rejections and side effects than botulinum toxin or filler, which account for most of the anti-wrinkle treatment market, the industry watchers say.
Rosmir also has a strong point that its acting period is one year, much longer than six months of botulinum toxin or filler.
A spike in Tego Science shares on the day that the company got the regulatory nod for Rosmir showed the market’s expectations for the new product. On the previous day of the approval, Tego Science closed at 76,900 won ($71.8) per share. On the day of the approval, the price jumped to exceed 100,000 won.
However, Rosmir has a high safety but may be expensive as cell therapies are costly in general. Some analysts said the price would be a variable in market competition.
“We have not determined the exact price. We are setting up marketing plans and checking our sales network. We plan to complete all the plans in the first half of the year and enable patients to get an anti-wrinkle procedure at a hospital,” an official at Tego Science said.
He went on to say, “The facial beauty market is big enough to digest not only existing products such as burn treatments but new products like ours, so we expect that the new product will help our company’s sales growth. We will make all efforts to release Rosmir in the market well.”
Rosmir received conditional approval after the completion of the phase-2 clinical trials.
According to Tego Science, Rosmir showed a wrinkle reduction in 76 percent of the test group in the single-dose clinical trials that compared with placebo. On the other hand, LaViv showed a wrinkle reduction in 20-40 percent of the test group through three times of administration.
Dermal fillers and botulinum toxin products are leading the existing anti-wrinkle facial beauty market. The Korean facial beauty market was worth 80.1 billion won ($75.2 million) in botulinum toxin, and 130.2 billion won in dermal fillers in 2015.